Memorandum
To: Tom Thompson, Chair, Faculty Council
From: Julie Lipovsky, Chair, Committee on Committees
Date: May 7, 2001
Re: Committee on Committee (ConC) report
The Committee on Committees met numerous times during the Spring, 2001 semester to collect information regarding faculty preferences, discuss issues pertaining to The Citadel’s standing committees, and develop a recommendation for staffing standing committees for the 2001 – 2002 academic year. Recommendations were forwarded on to General Carter on April 6, 2001.
A. The following recommendations were brought to Faculty Council for approval on April 19. All were approved.
1) The ConC recommends dissolving the Student Affairs Committee and tasking the Internal College Relations committee with making recommendations regarding advising issues during the 2001 – 2002 academic year.
The Student Affairs Committee (Bill Bloss, Chair) determined that most of the activities stipulated in their charter are now the responsibility of other individuals (e.g., working with foreign students) or committees on campus or are no longer relevant (veteran students). The Committee requested to dissolve the Student Affairs Committee with the stipulation that students continue to have a forum for providing input in student advising and other student-related issues. A second committee, Internal College Relations, which also has activities that seem to be the responsibility of other entities on campus, will examine its charter during the 2001 – 2002 year. At this time, it is expected that the Internal College Relations committee will redefine its tasks and incorporate student advisement issues into its list of activities or make recommendations in consultation with the ConC regarding how student advising issues should best be addressed.
2) The ConC recommends that the Fine Arts and Athletic Advisory Committees be staffed via faculty preference rather than by the ConC making recommendations based upon cluster or department.
Two committees, Fine Arts and Athletic Advisory, do not have charters and do not appear to require campus-wide representation. Therefore, we are not making recommendations for staffing these committees. ConC felt that faculty involvement on these committees should be similar to faculty involvement on the Communication Across Curriculum and CASTLE committees which is by faculty preference/interest rather than by recommendations of the ConC. The Athletics Advisory Committee is chaired by William Sharbrough, who could easily assemble a viable committee (i.e., there are a number of faculty members who have an interest in this committee) and a new chair of Fine Arts might need to be identified if Grant Staley is retiring.
3) The ConC recommends that the Pre-law, Pre-med and Reading committees be staffed by the departments for whom these committees are relevant rather than by the ConC.
The Pre-law, Pre-med, and Reading committees do not have charters and do not require campus-wide representation. The ConC felt that faculty involvement on these committees would be a function of faculty discipline and staffing decisions should be made at the Departmental level.
B. It is important to include the ConC’s rationale for staffing recommendations in this report. We made assignments based upon faculty preference whenever possible. However, this was not always possible given the following priorities and constraints:
1) The first priority was to ensure that the 2001 – 2002 committees are structured according to the staffing stipulations listed in each committee’s charter. Many 2000 – 2001 committees did not conform to their required structure.
2) The second priority was to ensure that no faculty member was assigned to more than two committees (including pre-law, pre-med, reading, and Faculty Council).
3) For the most part, we continued members’ assignments if they were in the middle of a three year term.
4) Some of the smaller departments, with few tenured faculty or full professors, presented a challenge due to a limited number of people eligible to serve on some of the committees (e.g., FTPC).
C. The ConC discussed a number of issues as we compiled the attached recommendations. Clearly, a number of committees need to reexamine and modify their existing charters (and one, Awards, needs to develop one). Therefore, we also are recommending that committee work next year be focused on these important tasks, well before the SACS self-study is in full-gear.
D. The ConC would also recommend that charters for each of the committees be more readily available (i.e., easily accessed from The Citadel’s webpage. This process was begun this academic year.
Respectfully submitted,
Julie A. Lipovsky, Chair Committee on Committees